In a present IT environment, in particular, in a place such as a data center in which resources are concentrated at one place, a mechanism (provisioning) for efficiently (in terms of processing time and resource utilization rate) allocating an excess resource (a server, a network apparatus, a storage, or the like) to each of services in response to load fluctuations of the services is required. In order to allocate this excess resource to the service, a hardware configuration, OS/application installation, and setting operations, which are suitable for the service, are required. However, setting processes (installing OS/application, switching VLAN (Virtual LAN), and the like) which occur in the process of the operation are relatively time-demanding work in general.
With this being the situation, as a method of carrying out prompt provisioning, a method (Patent Document 1) for uploading data by backing up provisioning data for a network apparatus has been already invented. Additionally, “clone installation” has been disclosed (for example, non-patent documents 1 and 2). In the “clone installation”, a disk image of a sever into which a predetermined OS or application is installed is stored in advance, and the disk image is copied at the time of provisioning.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. Hei 11-308302]
[Non-patent Document 1]
http://www.symantec.com/region/jp/products/ghost_enterprise/index.html
[Non-patent Document 2]
http://www.symantec.com/content/product.cfm?productid=9